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Published: August 27th 2007
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Denis comes to town!
Well, after a short memorable year in Japan, I finished up a language course and headed back to the island to the inevitable heat awaiting me.
The smells and sounds that had welcomed me in a year before had once again returned during my three week stint at the YWCA Foreign language school.
Happy I hadn’t retuned home a Christian or a young woman, Denis decided to pay me a visit for the glory of the island.
It was actually probably one of the best weeks that I have had during my time here and it definitely the best time I have had on the island.
During the summer places like Ikina come alive as various matsuris and long awaited holiday finally come around, and the Japanese allow themselves a break of 2-3 three days for the Obon Matsuri.
This I suppose is the equivalent of Christmas in many ways as although it is mainly for the purpose of commemorating those whose have passed away in the family that year, it requires family members to regroup for this once a year event.
Trains are packed and roads are jammed as people rush to return
The Legend
Our boat Captain, who made the weekend that much more memorable. Cheers cap'n! for the 2/3 day extravaganza.
Denis arrived on the crest of this wave in time to catch the second day of Obon, carried out in the tennis field of my JHS.
This is truly the peek into the small town Japanese festival and consisted of little more than 50-100 people, if that, as most spend the night visiting various graves littered about the island, and I think Denis also felt how lucky we were to be there.
As always this was the start of a week where we received the full island hospitality treatment that we are afforded every time I bring someone to the island, including freshly caught live fish being brought to our door and various other fine foods and fruit.
I think people find you much more approachable when you are with someone else and this combined with the holiday season meant that we finally met some young Japanese people I could maybe call friends!!! Yata!
After basically being fed and watered for free all night, we hung out with some of the boys who had put on the Festival. It is very interesting to me that the younger guys play such a big
role in organizing these important festivals. So we drank and did all the things that everyone talks about when they don’t know each other; talked about music and women, and arm wrestled……hmm.
AFTER BEATING DENIS IN AN ARM WRESTLING MATCH X2 we retired home to bed.
The following number of days Denis spent on the beach whilst I sat in my office doing very little to be completely honest as basically no-one was around or working on the island. In fact, all the teachers had the day off, and it was pretty much just me and my supervisor sitting in the office on the entire island.
Come Saturday we had spent a number of days on the beach doing nothing and had a few people around for a barbeque and were looking forward to a weekend on the beach of Tsubajima, a deserted island of Iwagi island a few minutes boat ride from my island.
After again, luckily landing a free ride from a very kind man on my island in his boat the Marine, we were dropped off by Mr Murakami and his granddaughter and found that a Japanese deserted island had people, vending machines
Beach peeps
Finally I met some people my own age! and running water, was in the end appreciated.
We lazed about and then tried fishing and although we caught nothing, we did spot a very lay ray float by beneath us and which made it all worth it.
Barbequing into the night we received some mighty fine watermelon from our camping neighbors who turned out to be Jennies mandolin teacher and seemed to have a lot of trouble remembering our names…
After a kind of sleepless night for me as m new, pimped 200 pound tent turned out not to be suited to sub-tropical Japanese island climates, as I sweated until 530ish and then slept outside, Murakami san returned and with a smile on his face and wave of his hand dropped us of as we tried to thank him for the ride. He simply replied “hai hai” which kind of translates as “sure sure” and made you feel like he ferried ganjin to and fro for a living.
The rest of the day was spent lazing in the heat and generally doing nothing until Denis experienced the joy of Habu my neighboring town where we ate okonomiyaki before hitting the hay as it takes about nine
hours to get back to Fukui from Ikina.
It was great to have a week really truly relaxing, and even though I was working, I felt like I caught up on some chilling out time and recovered fomr my 3 week city mayhem tour.
Sayonara Denman
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denis
non-member comment
Indeed twas a splendid week. Dissapointing to be back and see my Jtan fading. I hope you are attempting to keep in contact with the younguns that we met...